Bitterroot Lake

Whose presence had Janine sensed? Had the killer been close enough to identify her? Anyone else—a deliveryman, say, or a client coming in the back—would have called out at the sight of a body on the floor and a woman bent over him. Would not have hesitated, would have rushed forward, frightened but determined to help, at the very least to call 911.

Would not have been skulking around.

She stopped. Renee was watching her.

“Popped into the restroom,” she said. Lifted the boxes. “You always need more boxes than you think.”

The woman glared at her, as if Sarah hadn’t been speaking English.

“Yes,” she finally said, turning back to her desk. “Yes. You want to help, you can box those up.” She pointed to a stack of picture frames.

Sarah glanced casually at the photos as she packed. A younger Renee with a small girl on her lap, and another she guessed to be the girl’s senior portrait. A narrow black frame held a certificate from a legal assistant training program.

“What will happen to this office?” she asked. “And what will you do? Work for Fleming?”

“His office is in Whitefish, and I can’t make that drive every day.”

“Oh, so he left Deer Park?” The box was full and she set it on the floor. “Why did they dissolve the partnership?”

Renee’s eyebrows rose. “He and Misty, Lucas’s ex-wife.”

“Oh-h-h.” They would have warranted a close look anyway, wouldn’t they, the victim’s former partner and his former wife, but if they were together … No wonder Leo had refused to give Nic any specifics about other suspects.

“I heard,” Sarah continued, “that Lucas was considering a run for office.”

“Everybody wants to know about that.” Renee wrapped a small ceramic robin in a crumpled piece of newspaper and placed it in the other box. “All I know is he talked with a few people. If he had any plans, he didn’t tell me.”

“You knew him. What do you think happened?”

“No idea.”

“Misty? Fleming? An angry client or an ex-employee?” The woman jerked back, as if Sarah had slapped her. “I’m sorry. I’ve upset you.”

“No, no. It’s important to talk about it, even if you didn’t like him any more than the rest of us did.” She held up a hand. “It’s true. I see it on your face. Lucas was a difficult man.”

The woman’s insight was rather breathtaking, as was her willingness to speak so bluntly to a near-stranger. But that didn’t answer Sarah’s question.

Dislike was easy; murder was hard. Wasn’t it? Either it happened in an instant, a snapping, or the killer nurtured the anger, the resentment, the unrelenting hatred for a long time, tending it, polishing it, until it became a reason to kill.

Could Janine have done that?

Please, God, don’t let it be Janine. Because if it had been … Because if it had been Janine, then she was to blame, too.

* * *

So much had changed. So much was going to change. Such a relief that the Blue Spruce never changed.

Sarah took a seat at the counter and ordered coffee and huckleberry-peach pie. When she’d last had a slice of real live, honest-to-goodness pie, she could not recall. You could get pie in Seattle, of course. In Fremont, a shop served nothing but pie, and a diner in Lake City served killer coconut cream. The last time she’d taken a visitor downtown, to Pike Place Market, they’d seen crepes and donuts, fancy cheesecake, fresh croissants, and fruit-filled piroshky topped with sweet whipped cream. But pie? Not one slice.

And huckleberries? Fat chance.

Besides, if you were going to drink coffee and eat pie in a Montana café in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of the week, you ought to sit at the counter.

She laid her phone next to her napkin. Cradled the steaming brown mug in both hands and closed her eyes. She needed this.

Outside the law office, she’d loaded the box of pictures into the trunk of Renee Harper’s blue car. Emotion virtually swirled around the woman—sorrow, fear, anxiety about her own future? And maybe, or maybe this was Sarah projecting, a twinge of guilt over not having liked Lucas Erickson better when he was alive.

Then Renee had driven off and Sarah had walked down the block, past the quilt shop and the locksmith. She strolled down the alley behind the law office. She could see the post office from here. It shouldn’t have taken Renee more than ten minutes to walk out the back door, drop off the mail, and return. But running into Becca Smalley had thrown her off schedule.